Did Theresa May just declare open season on highly-paid bankers? I think she did.

It’s very pleasant that Stephen Hester of the Royal Bank of Scotland has turned down his bonus of around £1 million, after the Labour Party called for a Parliamentary debate about the subject.

But more bankers’ bonuses have yet to be declared, and could total hundreds of millions of pounds, if not billions.

At the same time, Home Secretary Theresa May has announced pay cuts for the police.

Big boost for the rich; big let-down for law enforcement.

Now.

I don’t know about you, but if I was a banker I’d be very worried about all this.

What if members of the criminal fraternity knew I was a banker? And what if they believed I’d be in line for one of these huge bonuses (it won’t matter if I am or not)? Wouldn’t that be, in their eyes, an invitation to break into my house and take whatever they can? After all – I can afford it, right?

And the cops’ noses are bound to have been put so far out of joint that they won’t be interested in sniffing out the culprits.

It’ll be more than their jobs are worth.

Nice one, Theresa. Not only is it open season on bankers, but you just shot yourself in the foot.

First Minister Carwyn Jones with Joyce Watson AM at the launch of the All Wales domestic abuse and sexual violence helpline

Anti-violence campaigner Joyce Watson AM has voiced her support for the launch of the All Wales Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Helpline.

The Helpline provides a 24 hour, bilingual information signposting service, to help and guide people with experience of domestic abuse or sexual violence, who are in need of access to services such as advice, emergency support, safety, and knowledge of their rights and options.

Joyce has campaigned for many years against violence, and set up candlelit services, first in Llandaff Cathedral some years ago, then last November in Brecon Cathedral, to raise awareness of violence against women and children.

The Mid and West Wales Assembly Member said: “This Helpline could be a lifeline to someone facing violence in their own home.

“The promise of 24 hour support, safety, signposting, and sanctuary will make a huge difference in far too many cases.

“In the last ten years there have been 12 homicides in the Dyfed Powys Police area, and seven of these involved domestic abuse.

“Domestic abuse is an issue for all of Wales, rural as well as urban. It accounts for a quarter of recorded crime in England and Wales, and in many instances children are witnesses to this abuse.”

The Helpline was first launched in 2004 as the Wales Domestic Abuse Helpline and has since taken over 215,000 calls from people in need of help and support.

Mrs Watson, who is a member of the Assembly All Party Group on violence against women and children, added: “Both physical and mental violence can have a devastating effect. If you feel isolated or endangered in your own home and you live in a rural community, help can feel a long way away.”

45 per cent of women have experienced some form of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.

Last year police recorded 48,738 incidents across Wales, including 11,759 arrests and five homicides

Dyfed Powys Police recorded 1,943 domestic incidents

1,975 people entered Welsh refuges last year.

Minister for Local Government and Communities, Carl Sargeant, said: “Domestic abuse and sexual violence are simply not acceptable.

“I am passionate about this subject, and so I’m pleased that the Welsh Government has consistently maintained the budget dedicated to maintaining services such as the All Wales Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence Helpline. The Helpline is a key part of our Right to be Safe strategy.

“As the new Helpline launches we will experience an increase in callers. This is not a failure in our efforts to stamp out such issues, it’s a success in that we will actually be reaching more of the victims who desperately need the support of the Helpline. With the launch of the new Helpline I firmly believe we are heading in the right direction.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse contact the All Wales Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Helpline on 0808 80 10 800, or for more information go to www.allwaleshelpline.org.uk

The Tory propoganda machine has been at it again – hushing up dissent to the, by now, pretty much universally-hated Health and Social Care Bill.

It seems Health Minister Andrew Lansley and his departmental colleagues have been on the blower to members of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. One presumes from the outcome that this was to assure them that releasing a statement opposing the Bill in its current form would be bad for their health.

The statement read as follows: “The medical royal colleges and faculties of the academy continue to have significant concerns over a number of aspects of the health bill and are disappointed that more progress has not been made in directly addressing the issues we have raised.

“The academy and medical royal colleges are not able to support the bill as it currently stands.

“Unless the proposals are modified the academy believes the bill may widen rather than lessen health inequalities and that unnecessary competition will undermine the provision of high quality integrated care to patients.”

The provisional plan had been to publish the statement late on Wednesday morning, ahead of Prime Minister’s questions.

But ministers led by Mr Lansley, along with senior officials, telephoned the presidents of the colleges ahead of its release, asking them to reconsider. We’re told the statement could have had a potentially devastating effect on the government’s plans.

Now it lies unused – another example of the methods Mr Lansley uses to stifle opposition to his unreasonable plan to privatise parts of the National Health Service and put taxpayers’ money into private operators’ offshore tax-haven bank accounts (as has been previously proved).

Remember the ‘risk report’ on the potential harm that would be caused to the health service if the Health and Social Care Bill becomes law? No? That’s because Mr Lansley still hasn’t published it, months after he was ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham.

The Commissioner found the department twice broke the law by refusing to accede to two separate requests under the Freedom of Information Act to see the assessment. The Department of Health has appealed against these rulings; if the appeal falls, then its officials, and Mr Lansley, are criminals.

One person, claiming to be a member of one of the colleges, stated that they voted on Wednesday, at an extraordinary general meeting, to come out in direct opposition to the Bill. The colleges’ leaders, by preventing them from doing so and not accepting that vote, were playing political games, in that person’s opinion.

Another commenter told us a decision against the Bill could still be made. It seems their daughter, a trainee public health consultant, was unable to attend the meeting at which the statement was discussed. She has been informed that her faculty is balloting all its members by post, according to its constitution and, if this is true, the results of the vote will not be known for another fortnight.

A third stated that the royal colleges had been intending to speak up to protect patients, from a position of specialist knowledge and understanding, but had been swayed from protecting patients and the NHS to protecting the government after Mr Lansley and/or his colleagues contacted them.

Back we go to the famous comment by Albert Einstein: “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Like many others, I think the public needs to know what was said in those last-minute phone calls.

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So have you seen the latest about Andrew Lansley and his health reforms?

It seems the Commons Health Select Committee, chaired by his forerunner as Health Minister, Stephen Dorrell, has released a report saying that hospitals have been “salami slicing” their services as they try to find £20 billion in efficiency savings while Mr Lansley busily refoces the NHS towards privatisation around them.

It said the process “continues to complicate the push for efficiency gains”, it was far from certain whether the targets will be met, and there was a “marked disconnect between the concerns expressed by those responsible for delivering services and the relative optimism of the Government” over achieving cuts. In other words, Mr Lansley was misrepresenting the situation.

Lansley has insisted that the report is out of date and unfair and that patient care is not suffering due to his reorganisation. Well he would, wouldn’t he?

The MPs’ report follows statements of “outright opposition” to the Health and Social Care Bill being debated by Parliament, by the British Medical Association (BMA), the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges – representing doctors, nurses and midwives.

According to Labour leader Ed Miliband, speaking in Prime Minister’s Questions on January 25, no less than 98 per cent of GPs want the bill withdrawn – and these are the people who are supposed to be benefiting from it!

How far can Mr Lansley be trusted on this? Well, do you remember last November, when his Department for Health was ordered to publish its analysis of the risks that his shake-up of the NHS poses for the health service, after a year-long battle to keep it secret, because it might harm the Health Bill’s passage through Parliament? It still hasn’t seen the light of day.

What about when Mr Lansley said that some NHS trusts were on the brink of collapse due to having to honour Private Finance Initiative contracts arranged with the previous Labour government, last September – and then the trusts he mentioned furiously contradicted him? They said their problems were caused by his edict that they should cut their budgets by four per cent every year for the next four years.

There’s the revelation that the Department of Health inflated the costs of NHS operations in its reports to MPs, in order to make private operations – and therefore private providers – more attractive.

Or does anyone remember the really big ones, back in the days of the 2010 general election? When Lansley’s boss, David Cameron, said there would be no top-down reorganisation of the health service if he became Prime Minister? Immediately after taking power, the Health and Social Care Bill was announced. Lansley himself admitted on the BBC’s Question Time that he had been working on it for six years prior to the election.

So when Mr Cameron said he needed only three letters to sum up his plans for the future (“N.H.S.”) we can now be assured that they stood for “No Health Service”.

There are more incidents of the Health Secretary and his Prime Minister misleading us over the effects of the Bill – and certainly over the amount of support it has from healthcare professionals, but I’ve mentioned our comedy Prime Minister so let’s move on to him.

Mr Cameron is a repeat offender when it comes to misleading the public. Take a look at this letter from Mr Miliband to him, following on from the PMQs I have already mentioned:

In an answer to me, you said that “There are more people in work today than there were at the time of the last election”. In fact, the most recent employment figures from the Office for National Statistics show that total employment between May-July 2010 and September-November 2011 fell by 26,000.

In an answer to Lindsay Roy MP, you said that the Merlin agreement “actually led to an increase in bank lending last year”. In fact, the latest Trends in Lending report from the Bank of England, published last Friday, said that “the stock of lending to SMEs contracted between end-April and end-November 2011”.

In an answer to Paul Maynard MP, you spoke of “the real shame… that there are so many millions of children who live in households where nobody works and indeed that number doubled under the previous government”. In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics, the number of children living in workless households fell by 372,000 between April-June 1997 and April-June 2010.

In an answer to Rt Hon Anne McGuire MP, who said that your Government was planning to cut benefits to disabled children, you said that “The Hon Lady is wrong”. In fact, according to page 28 of the Department for Work and Pensions’ own impact assessment on the introduction of universal credit, your policy of mirroring for disabled children the current adult eligibility for Disability Living Allowance means that the rate paid to those disabled children who do not qualify for the highest rate of the DLA care component “would be less than now (£26.75 instead of £53.84)”.

I have mentioned, in another article on this blog, that the IMF has revised its expectations of UK economic growth this year down from 1.6 per cent to 0.6 per cent. On Wednesday it was revealed that the economy in fact contracted by 0.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2011 – the run-up to Christmas, when it should have been at its busiest. Jeremy Paxman had the time of his life on Newsnight, when he told Danny Alexander the government had no idea what it was doing.

But today, Mr Cameron was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, telling other countries to be bolder if they want to see off their economic troubles. He said his government’s efforts to bring the economy under control had “earned credibility and got [the UK] ahead of the markets”.

One can’t help but wonder how many of the other world leaders were laughing up their sleeves at these comments from a man whose policies lie utterly discredited after a week of one damning report after another.

Where did he learn to play fast and loose with the facts like that?

My guess would be that it was at the Conservative Party’s Research Department (CRD) where his boss was – who would have thought it? – Andrew Lansley.

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COMMUNICATING with people who have opposing points of view can be very valuable and I advise everybody to try it.

I mention this because I have been chatting with some of the folk on the Conservatives’ Facebook page, about this week’s big subject – work and working conditions. It follows my article, Benefits v bonuses – everybody’s a loser, to which some of them took offence, and I wanted to draw your attention to our dialogue about the minimum wage.

They want it dropped. One of them claimed it has devalued jobs, saying that he used to work in a warehouse, driving forklift trucks, for around £9 per hour – but when the minimum wage was brought in, the hourly rate went down all over the warehousing industry and suddenly idiots were driving trucks, taking no care in what they were doing. If they did something wrong, they were sacked and another employed who was just as bad.

This indicates that “you get what your worth”, the gentleman said, and then asked how small businesses can be expected to survive when they have to pay a good wage, even if the person is no good.

My answer was that, unfortunately, you don’t get what you’re worth.

Employers try to pay the lowest amount possible, and in the case of these forklift truck drivers that was the absolute minimum. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys (as the saying goes) and that’s what happened – the quality of the workforce dropped.

If the workforce had been unionised, it could have negotiated for better pay and higher-quality workers. I know unions have not been very strong since the days of Mrs Thatcher – but they do have their uses sometimes!

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We interrupt our series on how to get the UK back to work for a few words about the economy: Out of the frying pan, into the fire!

The IMF has downgraded its growth expectations for the UK economy this year by a whole one per cent, from 1.6 per cent to 0.6 per cent.

In other words, the downward spiral that’s been going on – ever since David Cameron and George Osborne decided to halt the promising recovery we were enjoying before they came to office in 2010 – continues unabated.

So austerity doesn’t work, right?

My problem with this is that the information comes from the International Monetary Fund – the very organisation that told us our economy had a completely clean bill of health, immediately before the Credit Crunch. How can we ever trust anything that comes out of it again?

On the ‘plus’ side, every downgrade of the UK’s predicted economic performance since the Coalition came to power has come true, as near as you like, so I think we can rely on this one.

On the ‘minus’ side, this means the UK economy – our industry, our commerce, our way of life – is in one heck of a lot of doodoo. If you think we’re at rock bottom now, imagine our situation at the end of the year, with 12 months of bat guano beneath rock bottom, and us beneath that.

On the very same day that this announcement came out, the government announced that it is on course to meet its borrowing target for the current financial year.

As I understand it, this is the target that was revised upwards in the Chancellor’s autumn statement, and the bank levy, last January’s VAT increase and debt control measures are helping the government reach it.

So austerity does work, right? The BBC even produced a Germanic-sounding pundit to underline the finding, sort of like: “Ja ja, austerity ist vorkink!” (Thank you, ‘Cultural Stereotypes R Us’, for that one).

But… This is the same government that said a majority of disabled people supported its proposed ‘reforms’ of their benefits (they didn’t) and doctors and nurses approved of its plans to change the NHS (they don’t).

Unemployment recently rose to a high point, in recent years, of 2.68 million – nearly 10 per cent of the workforce. How much is the government spending on benefits for these people?

I feel certain that one of the above-mentioned institutions will be making an apologetic climbdown again soon.

And I doubt it’ll be the IMF.

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As I type these words, this has been a day of defeat for the government. Its bid to cap benefits at £26,000 – forcing some families to face the prospect of losing their homes – has been defeated by the Lords, while in the Commons, MPs totally failed to cap the spectacularly high amounts paid to (for example) bankers.

The link between the two is the average amount of pay earned by workers in the UK today. The government says this is £26,000, which Tory MP Margot James seems to think is a large amount of money. I wonder how she describes the current average salary for an MP like herself, which is £65,738, two-and-a-half times as much. In addition, MPs receive allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, having somewhere to live in London and in their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency – and we all know that no MP has ever – ever – abused those allowances, don’t we?

The fact is that on a day when the Royal Bank of Scotland has been asking the government to allow it to pay bonuses worth £500 million to staff who have put that firm into the red by £750 million in the last six months, £26,000 is not a high figure. It is a derisory figure. A pittance.

People on benefits, and those speaking for them, have argued that this figure will not be enough to keep many of them in their homes. That is why the Lords voted to exempt Child Benefit from those included in the cap – in order to offer children a stable environment in which to grow up.

The question arises: If it isn’t enough to keep families on benefits in their homes, how do working people who are earning less than this amount manage to make ends meet?

My own experience colours my answer to that: Very badly. When I was last in a full-time job, the salary did not cover all my outgoings and I had to give it up for that reason. Simple as that. Fortunately my partner finally succeeded in a years-long battle to claim Disability Living Allowance shortly afterwards and I became a carer – and we’re better off that way. That’s not an indictment of the welfare and benefits system; it’s an indictment of the way wages have been depressed below the rate of inflation for the last 30 years or so.

I’m told the firm lost business after I left. To me, that indicates a lapse of judgement in allowing me to go, and that bosses might have been better off if they had offered me a sum that would have allowed me to go on living comfortably, rather than worrying about a long, slow slide into debt (to the bank! where the bonuses happen).

I would rather be in a paying job than a carer. I don’t believe I’m betraying my partner, who needs the care, by saying that. But I don’t believe I can earn the amount we would need, in order to get a better quality of life, for her or both of us.

What’s the solution? Obvious, really: pay working people the living wage they deserve!

If the average wage was a reasonable amount (and I feel no need to bind anyone’s thinking here, so I won’t suggest one) then, firstly, the poor working man or woman would not feel so hard-done-by, with people on benefits pulling down as much as them or more yet having done no work for it, and bosses taking home obscene amounts generated by the efforts of other people.

Those on benefits would have less reason to feel victimised because the average amount at which their benefits will be pegged would be high enough for them to survive, and possibly even enough for them to think about how to get back into work and earn more money for themselves and their families (if they have them), rather than focusing solely on survival.

All this hinges on the bosses who, as we know, are extremely reluctant to share out the profits they haven’t earned for themselves. I have no sympathy for those on obscenely large salaries and bonus schemes – those in FT350 companies whose salaries have multiplied seven times in the last 20 years, while the firms’ performance has improved by only 23 per cent and the wages they pay their workers has risen by just 27 per cent (less than the rate of inflation). They can take a smaller slice of the cake and put up with it.

But what about the bosses of smaller firms who might be struggling to keep their heads above water? They might not be taking very much more than their workforce. What’s the solution for them?

To my way of thinking, they need to be competitive, and a demoralised workforce does not make a business competitive. Also, they need the tools to do their job properly and I can foresee a time when the economic situation will mean their equipment will be out of date.

Perhaps this is a time for the government – either local or national – to come forward with a match-funding scheme of some kind to keep these firms on their feet; but with one major condition. The companies should re-form into co-operatives, in which every worker has a stake in the profits. This would re-fire their enthusiasm and, hopefully, improve performance, leading to a knock-on increase in wages and bonuses that are not unearned drains on resources but based on real profit.

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It looks as though (as I write this, early on January 23) the UK Coalition government is about to lose yet another vote on changes to welfare benefits, in the House of Lords. Quelle surprise.

The changes (I refuse to call them reforms), dreamed up by Iain Duncan Smith, have been pilloried by the public as attacks on the poor, and it’s easy to see why. The Guardian, for example, compares two families.

“One is an Islington couple who have never worked. The other is an Oldham family with four children, where the working parent has just lost his or her job,” writes Tim Leunig. “The Islington couple currently receive £250 a week in housing benefit, while the Oldham family gets only £150.

“Times are tough, and the government wants to save money. Which family should have its housing benefit cut? George Osborne has chosen the Oldham family. He is cutting its housing benefit to £96 a week, while allowing the Islington couple to continue to claim £250 a week for as long as they like.

“That is the reality of the £26,000 benefit cap. It takes no account of your employment history or family size. So a central London couple who have never worked are unaffected, because they currently receive less than £26,000 in benefits. But a large family – even in a cheap house – will be hit. That is not sensible.”

But that is the problem with the Tories – no eye for detail. They like to simplify (I believe that’s their euphemism) the benefits system – the classic example being the new Universal Credit, with which they intend to replace a whole bundle of dedicated payments. The problem is that this creates far more problems than it solves and will end up costing far more money. Count on it.

There is grim humour in the fact that this failure to understand the nuances, the details, of the system has become the defining characteristic of Tory leader David Cameron, who was described by Peter Snowdon, in his book Back From The Brink – The Inside Story of the Tory Resurrection, as having “an eye for detail”!

(Snowdon also states that Cameron has a “flair for words”. Considering the trouble his turn of phrase created for him after he described sitting opposite Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls as being similar to facing a man with Tourette’s syndrome, this also seems an unfortunate description)

David Cameron is a loser. His first attempt to get into Parliament was in 1997, when he contested the Stafford seat. He lost. Nobody should ever forget the fact that, with Labour at its lowest point in 13 years, Cameron totally failed to win a Parliamentary majority that was his for the taking in 2010.

And late last year, he managed to use the UK’s EU veto to sideline this nation from the main action in restructuring the Eurozone, effectively isolating us from decisions that directly affect British trade with its largest partner. This is the man who once declared (about Tony Blair): “The socialist Prime Ministers of Europe… want a federalist pussycat and not a British lion. It is up to us in this party… to make sure that lion roars, because when it does no-one can beat us.” In the event, it turned out that the roar was more of a mewl, and no-one outside the UK really noticed. Who’s the pussycat now, David?

People like Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, have already stated they will oppose the welfare changes. They have realised that the Coalition is an alliance of losers and want to distance themselves.

However, both Cameron and his Tories are faring well in the opinion polls at the moment. Why?

It could be because Labour, under Ed Miliband and the aforementioned Mr Balls, has not created a well-defined image of itself as the opposing political force. The Labour leadership recently stated it would not reverse any of the Coalition’s cuts if it came into power – creating a stink among the trade unions and collapsing support from party members. If the Labour Party won’t change anything, why support it?

To me, it seems that the two Eds are trying to engineer a repeat of history. In the mid-1990s, according to George Bridges (the Tories’ former campaigns director), Tony Blair was “picking up Tory principles that he felt were appealing to middle England and playing them for all they were worth”. He also promised not to raise Income Tax and committed Labour to Tory spending targets for two years after being elected.

But the political landscape was very different in 1997. Inflation had been curbed and the economy was fairly secure, and the UK headed – under Labour – into the most sustained period of growth it had ever known (or certainly the most sustained in decades).

Now, that bubble has burst and we are, as a nation, having to pay. The Coalition, headed by the Tories, has dictated that the poorest of us must pay the most, and that is a weakness that Labour should exploit.

Labour should be attacking the belief that the economy is safe with the Tories. It isn’t. They took a national economy that was showing the beginnings of strong recovery and choked it off with their austerity programme; also, a programme that benefits those who are already rich while forcing the poor, the disabled, and the rising numbers of jobless into increasing penury is not good stewardship. How can it be? With more people out of work, whether they are receiving benefits or not, fewer are contributing taxes to the Treasury to help pay off the national deficit. The recovery cannot happen.

Labour should be attacking the culture of greed and arrogance that Mr Cameron tried to shake off whilst in Opposition, but has reared its ugly head again, now that the Tories are in office.

Labour should be attacking the divisions in the Tory Party – Europe is an example of this. Conservatives are held together, not by any strong, unifying ideals, but by the thirst for power and money, and members of the Party have widely varying views on almost any issue you care to put before them. It’s just a matter of finding the right pressure-point and applying enough leverage, and they’ll splinter.

And then there’s Tory sleaze. This is never far away. Who can forget the extramarital affairs enjoyed by multiple Tory ministers in the administrations of 1979-97, or ‘Cash for Questions’, to quote just two famous examples?

All Labour has to say about its own policies, in government, is that the Party will do what works. The Tories have proved themselves to be wedded to ideological programmes – stripping back the welfare state, creating tax havens so the rich can keep their money and not contribute to public services, and so on. These are harming the nation. In contrast, Labour need only state it will level up the playing field, re-balance the nation’s finances, and set us up to get back on our feet, and the votes should come rolling in.

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‘Herr Gunter Ground [not his real name], aged 41, mislaid the keys to his house and attempted to crawl in through the catflap. Unfortunately he got stuck halfway, and couldn’t get out again. A passing group of students then spotted him and decided to take advantage of the poor man. So they removed his trousers, painted his buttocks bright blue and stuck a daffodil in his bum, and erected a sign saying, “Germany resurgent, an essay in street art – please give generously.”

‘Passers-by were assured that Herr Ground’s screams were all part of the act and he remained stuck there for two days. He was only freed when an old woman called the police. “I kept shouting for help,” said Herr Ground, “but people kept saying, ‘very good, very clever’ and throwing coins at me.”‘

Hasn’t art become a cynical business? The example above is a bit extreme, but it does show how people are prepared to pay for all sorts of things if they show – not necessarily any kind of aesthetic beauty that is otherwise useless (all art is useless, according to Oscar Wilde) but that the artist is clever.

Look at Damien Hirst’s ‘Cow in Formaldehyde’. Lots of people have asked whether that is really art.

However, I’m not one to miss a bandwagon if I can get on it. Noting that Barry Humphries (otherwise known as Dame Edna Everage) has stolen a huge head start on me with his painting of yellow liquid in a pair of Wellingtons – ‘Pus in Boots’ – I have set about creating some artworks of my own.

I’m very proud of one image – an enormous, panoramic view of the starscape above a darkened British horizon, showing a night sky full of colourful nebulae, shooting stars, and other astronomical phenomena, over the shadowy silhouettes of a circle of vehicles, gathered around a couple in the act of physical affection. I call it ‘Dog Star’.

The idea doesn’t have to be saucy, though. Another one I had was of a warrant officer or petty officer in charge of a ship’s rigging, anchors, cables, and deck crew, directing them during a storm, so that only his nametag was visible. I’d call that one ‘Higgs the Bos’n’.

And just recently I thought of a very postmodern idea, of a British policeman accosting the late actor whose real name was Marion Morrison: ‘Constable’s Hey, Wayne’.

I think we’re far enough away from the Festive Season, now, that I can get away with posting this and not offend anybody’s sensibilities. It sums up my feelings about a certain element of that part of year, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

(The clip is taken from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Christmas Clue, which is available on CD from BBC Audio/AudioGO and is used for review purposes – in other words, to have a laugh. Also to encourage you to go out and discover Clue for yourself because it’s brilliant).

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